LAPD Have Nothing Better To Do…?

I was downtown today with and as I crossed the street, the walk sign just started flashing as I stepped into the crosswalk, I was given a ticket. The officers involved were standing quietly behind a post, in the alcove of a building entrance, private property by the way, and asked if they could talk with me. They asked with such a quiet voice that I said, “excuse me?” and they repeated themselves and I stepped over to them….

At that point the two officers expressed that I was going to get a ticket for crossing against the light, etc. I’ve gotten many a ticket before, but never for crossing the street. What gets me is that the police officers were really rude… OK, one was quiet and didn’t say anything, it was obvious that he was the junior if not still training (the other officer told him what to do, how to fill out the ticket etc.).

The one female officer really had a power trip going on. When I asked her about this, she was belligerent. At this point I figured I better start documenting this, so I took a picture of the two officers. I also started recording the conversation on my iPhone via the voice memo feature. I asked her for a business card and the badge numbers of both officers and they were reticent to give them out. I had to ask multiple times for the information and only after they were finished writing me up would they give the the info, and then they wouldn’t give me their badge number. They insisted that a serial number is all that I need…. What’s a serial number for a police officer? I now from Adam about that, having been ingrained in all of our heads for decades, get the badge number. I had to look at their badges and get the number myself, they did not volunteer it.

While they are writing me the ticket, one of the officers had asked me to “stand there” and pointed, and I moved to the spot…. while I was talking with her and asking for badge numbers, etc. she kept pointing to other places that she wanted me to stand. I moved, then moved again, each time, all of about one foot. She was just having fun making me move around…. When she asked me to move once again, I said that I am standing exactly where she told me to and that I hadn’t moved, why do I have to move again, that’s when she called for a car and a sergeant came to the scene with another officer.

So in the end, I got a ticket for using a crosswalk when the no crossing signal was flashing. Don’t LAPD officers have more important crimes to deal with than folks crossing the street? Wouldn’t it benefit the officer from not having a power trip and making me move from place to place. BTW, the reason stated by officer Haro why I had to wait to get their info was so one officer could write and the other could be on “look-out”… but remember there were now 4 officers there, she was just doing that power trip thing again!

And folks wonder why the police are so monumentally disliked…. Maybe if they treated folks the same way that they liked to be treated their job would be easier!